Албена Вачева

This study is a theoretical attempt at presenting the ideas of the famous theoretician of literature Jonathan Culler. Based on his interest in language and its nature of sign, the analysis is being focused on Culler’s literary studies, which make him one of the most provocative examiners of literature and its institutions. Along with literary criticism, the modern organized school and university, such institution is the language itself. In order to be complete the analysis pays heed to several crucial concepts of Jonathan Culler’s literary theory, examining them in discussion with the theoretical ideas of authors like Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Umberto Eco and Terry Eagleton.

The article is a theoretical examination of the modern Bulgarian vision about West (Europe) as a legitimizing instrument in the native/nonnative art debate in the Bulgarian cultural context after World War I. The analysis is focused on critical and culture-scrutinizing articles published in Bulgarian periodicals in the 1930s which display the ways of perception/resistance to the west European cultural standards. Studying the relationships between native (taken as cultural traditions) and European (understood as „high norms" and criteria for commensurability) the paper discusses the parameters of the above-mentioned debate, which played an important role in Bulgarian cultural life in the next years and became an important issue of Bulgarian national self-vision and self-perception.

The text aims at showing the results of a study on women's role in the Bulgarian literary field. The paper puts an emphasis on the Women Writers Club, a female organization that existed between 1930 and 1944 and was mainly active in the field of modern literature and culture. The conclusions were drawn on the basis of a number of public records, such as The Club's minute book and The Women Club rules, as well as many publications in the periodical press concerning the Club's activities. Discussed in the paper are those mechanisms through which female writers were included in those events that were important in terms of cultural field's transformation into autonomous and professional field. Also, examined in the paper are the issues of power and literature, the relations between the state and the cultural institutions, and the way the cultural capital was divided and transformed in the modern Bulgarian state.

Article is a theoretical study of literary sketch"s transformations from the point of view of its genre peculiarities in the era of socialism. The main accent is put on texts published in Bulgarian mass media and literary magazines (like Plamak and Septemvri) between 1944/45 - 1970. Communist ideology"s influence over literature is looked through the topics of the creating "new man" in the "new communist society", processes of industrialization, internationalism and battle with the "world of capital". Modern left social visions are presented in ideological clichés of totalitarian ideology. At the same time, they are admitted by literary theory as an important part of Bulgarian literature and proclaimed as elements of a theoretical construction with mythological projections - so-called "socialist realism". In these processes sketch widely presented political point of view of ruling party and became an instrument for pervasion of ideological messages in people"s everyday life.

The article analyses the results of a survey conducted with students, related to the short stories published in the daily newspapers in the 1990s of the XX century. Based on the received answers, a study of the literary field in the reviewed period and the ontological characteristics of the media in which the stories are published is made. The focus is put on the problem of rapid "aging" of the aesthetic patterns, as well as on the issue of the specific "informational archive" in which the works are conserved in the libraries. The article analyses the question of the factors—including political-ideological ones—that form certain receptive readers’ attitudes and expectations towards published literary short stories

The main topic in the article is a question about the place and role of literature and different technics of interpretation, practiced by the readers. In the focus of the study are 4 novels very popular and representative about Bulgarian mass literature – and especially – about chick lit. The Za edna nosht, Yoga, lyubov i drugi mitove, Triumfat na kuchkite, Triumfat na kuchkite (Prodalzhenieto) provoke wide discussions in social networks. A new term – the social resemblance principle – is forged and used to explain the communicative position of big fan groups of readers, which in the process of literary texts explanation recognize chick lit novels as a description of reality. From that position they argue with the critically oriented readers, raising up fictional models to socially and moral valid norms in the battles for cultural categories interpretation.